Juniors Grace Khuzami, John Morsberger and Sarah Sakr are running for Student Staff Council (SSC) president for the 2025–2026 school year.
The three candidates will give election speeches at a high school assembly on Friday, May 16, and students will elect the next SSC president in a Google Form shortly after. The candidate with the most votes will succeed senior Natalia Freedman as president for the 2025–2026 school year.
A good SSC president is “very organized and good at delegating,” has “a clear vision” and “is able to talk to administrators in a respectful and effective manner,” Freedman said. “I think it’s really easy to get sucked up in a lot of little things that people do at SSC, and then you forget the big picture or big goal of the year.” Freedman said advanced preparation is important. “It’s so much more work than you anticipate, and it’s hard to get things done,” she cautioned.
Khuzami, who has been on the council since her sophomore year, is currently SSC’s vice president. She said her time as vice president has helped her to better understand the responsibilities of the president and put more effort into her work on the council. “I don’t just go to SSC for an hour on a Monday afternoon. It’s something I do all the time,” Khuzami said. “I’ve been in place as the president when Natalia isn’t here,” and “[ran] Monday meetings.”
Morsberger has been on SSC since his freshman year. He said he wants to be SSC president because he enjoys being in leadership roles and referred to his experience leading his Boy Scout troop. “I was the senior patrol leader, so I led the troop and planned all the weekly meetings,” he said. Morsberger said being SSC president “would be a neat opportunity to lead the class.”
Sakr is going into her second term on the council and said she would be a good president because of her understanding of the GDS community. “I really understand the culture of GDS. I’ve been at this school for 13 years, and I’m really involved with every aspect of student life,” Sakr said.
Effective communication between the administration, the council and the students is one of Khuzami’s biggest campaign focuses. She said the phone ban, which went into effect in the fall of 2024 and prohibits students from using their phones during the school day, was an example of limited communication between the administration and the students. “With the phone ban, there wasn’t really much consideration into it with the students’ perspective,” Khuzami said.
Khuzami has already begun efforts to increase administrative communication. “I’ve been talking to some parent members of the Board [of Trustees], seeing about having more SSC input,” she said. Khuzami referred to High School Principal Yom Fox’s discussion with SSC on Monday, April 21 about potential changes to the phone policy and assembly structure as an example of good communication between the administration and the students that she hopes to continue if elected.
Khuzami said she wants to work more closely with the GDS faculty and other student groups. “I really do want more faculty involved in SSC. It used to be that a lot more teachers would help with SSC or just come in to talk, and I really want that to happen again,” she said. She also wants to partner with the student-led Academic Committee to hear more student feedback. In the past, the Academic Committee worked to provide all freshmen with TI-84 calculators and create the current schedule of four class periods a day.
If elected, Morsberger said he will prioritize club funding. “We have a lot of budget that could still be used, and I don’t think we’ve had a ton of clubs come to us for funding,” he said.
He also wants to make a more noticeable impact on student life. “I just want to emphasize the fun of student government. I want to do things that people see and make people know that we do actually do things in the school,” Morsberger said.
Morsberger said he wants to focus on the big picture and overall effectiveness of the council, especially during meetings. He said he would be good at keeping the council productive because of his leadership experience with the Boy Scouts. Morsberger thought the most important part of being SSC president is showing up for the community as a whole. “People like to campaign for student government with one issue they want to solve, but it’s more about the presence.” Morsberger said he has “only missed one or two meetings in the past two years,” and he hopes to continue that consistency as president.
Sakr said she wants to focus on stress relief and creating bonding opportunities for the high school. One of her ideas is to hold SSC study sessions before and during major assessment weeks. “I think that will foster an environment of collaboration rather than that stressful nature when assessments come around,” Sakr said. She also wants to improve the outdoor space outside the English classrooms and hold movie nights on the high school field. She said events that bring the school together “really stand out to me and really make it special to be a GDS student. I believe in keeping all of our cherished traditions, but also introducing new ones.”
Fulfilling representatives’ campaign promises is a topic Sakr finds important. She plans on creating a document that outlines what each representative has promised to do and what the council has done each week to fulfill those promises “in order to improve efficiency and impact.”
Sakr is currently in the process of getting an ice cream truck to come to GDS, which was one of her original campaign promises last year. “I really do like to follow through. No matter how long it takes, I will always make do on my promises,” Sakr said.
The next SSC president’s term will begin at the SSC meeting at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, May 19. During the meeting, the council will elect the next vice president, secretary and treasurer.